What is more resource-intensive; firing a remote event 60 times a frame or passing a table thru a remote event once a frame?

[cooldeath49]

I’m trying to make a raycast-projectile system where the raycast is on the client side, and the raycast then replicates to server thru remote event, which then replicates to other clients thru remote event.
When it comes to positioning of the projectiles, I don’t know which is more resource intensive; say for example there are 60 projectiles in the air at the same time. Which is worse; firing a remote event 60 times a frame (to account for 60 projectiles/trajectories), or firing a remote event once a frame, except all of the projectile data is passed as a table (literally just the position and one other parameter or smth)?
If you need more information just LMK, I’m still on the fence about this.

[ExcessEnergy]

In this case, firing one remote event per frame is by far the better option. However, even one event per frame makes for a ludicrous workload. In fact, roblox will probably block you from firing and receiving this many remote events.

Why can’t you do the Raycasting on the Server, so that you don’t need SO many remote events. Even if you found a way for this to not break your game, it would be extremely recourse consuming, and would kill performance.

If there is another option, do use it, as this is an extremely bad practice that is very impractical.

[CoderHusk]

From my experience I don’t see an FPS drop unless I am rendering stuff or instancing parts.

[RawEggTheGreatIX (Reed)]

like what @ExcessEnergy said, it would lag. A thing I want to mention is that since it is client side, an exploiter can essentially change their Ray so it hits whatever target they want without any skill.

I think it should be entirely server side, it shouldn’t cause that much lag.

IF lag does becomes a problem maybe re-use rays.
What I mean by “re-use” rays is that a ray from one bullet can be exactly the same as the one before or after it, since it they were fired in the same physics simulation update. So maybe assign a ray per simulation update(s) instead of assigning each bullet a ray.

[cooldeath49]

I run my rays on a Heartbeat loop, meaning that the rays fire every frame (if not, a decent amount of times per second). I do this to simulate bullet drop; I string together multiple small rays to simulate the trajectory of a projectile interacting with gravity.
I actually do the raycasting on the server, but after discovering that raycasting multiple projectiles at the same time causes heartbeat drops, or encountering physics-heavy games with horrible heartbeat delta times, I’m looking for another answer, which is why I’m investigating client-server-client raycasting.
As for preventing remote logging, I’m quite aware that exploiters can manipulate their rays, so I’m working on creating sanity checks as well.
But anyway, I’m still looking for alternatives. I’m investigating into the remote-event-firing-once-per-frame-but-with-tables thing. Thanks anyway, guys!

[Tomarty]

It really depend what you’re sending. The most efficient solution in terms of network usage would be to send 1 compact string at the end of the frame. string.pack is a great way to do this easily.

@Tomarty

We can measure how much data a remote needs to send in bytes. Basically each character in a string is one byte, so “ExampleRemoteKey” would send at least 16 bytes because it has 16 characters. When numbers are used, it needs to replicate a double which is 8 bytes long.

It’s a little more complicated than this though. Roblox also needs to send the value’s type as well as string lengths. There are cases where a string can use less data than a number, and there are cases where a number can use less data than a string. Here are some rough results using studio’s ‘Performance’ tab today:

Blank remote call: ~9 bytes

string (len 0): 2 bytes
string (len 1): 4 bytes
string (len 2): 8 bytes
string (len 3): 9 bytes
string (len 4): 10 bytes
string (len 5): 11 bytes
string (len 6): 12 bytes
string (len 8): 14 bytes
string (len 16): 22 bytes
string (len 32): 36 bytes

boolean: 2 bytes
number: 9 bytes

table (empty): 2 bytes
table (array with 4 numbers): 38 bytes

EnumItem: 4 bytes
Vector3: 13 bytes
CFrame (axis aligned): 14 bytes
CFrame (random rotation): 20 bytes

[cooldeath49]

Hey, this sounds like a nice idea but I currently have no clue what string.pack means. I tried looking it up but to no avail, apparently it has something to do with tables. What does it do?

[blokav]

string.pack is a new thing for compressing data.

Release Notes for 441

Here’s a quick primer for string.pack for people who think “how can this possibly be of any use to me”. Let’s say you want to transmit the character state over the wire. A character has position (where they are), walk direction (where are they going) and health. Position requires three numbers but they can be 32-bit floating point because that’s as much precision as Vector3 gives you anyhow. Direction requires three numbers but they are from -1…1 and you don’t need to be as precise. Health r…

[cooldeath49]

Hi Tomarty,
So I’m trying out what you suggested me; using string.pack to pack all of the data into one string and firing it every frame. I literally have no idea how to do this; in terms of client-server-client replication, one client can send data to the server and then the server replicates it to all of the clients, but when multiple clients send stuff to the server I don’t know the “time increment” per say, for the server to fire events back to the clients. How would I do this? Is there any other way? (currently I just have clients shoot data thru string.pack and the server back to client with the same way)